API Lifecycle Seminars In New York City

15 May 2018

I’ve had a huge demand for putting on API seminars for a variety of enterprise groups lately. Helping bring my API 101, history, lifecycle, and governance knowledge to the table. I’ve conducted seminars in the UK and France in April, and have more in Virginia, Massachusetts, and California in May. I’ve been working with a variety of companies, institutions, and government agencies to plan even more internal seminars, which is something that is proving to be challenging for some groups who are just getting started on their API journey.

While groups are keen on me coming visit to share my API knowledge, some of them are having trouble getting me through legal, get me into their payment systems, and making everyone’s schedules work. Some of them don’t have a problem figuring it out, while others are facing significant amounts of bureaucracy and friction due to the size, complexity, and legacy of their organizations. To help simplify the process for organizations to participate in my seminars I am going to begin planning a rolling schedule of seminars beginning in New York City.

Every two weeks, on Tuesday and Wednesday I’ll be planning to do a 2-day API lifecycle seminars in NYC. I’m going to be focusing on delivering 12 stops along the API lifecycle, targeting my readers and customers who have already embarked on their API journey:

Day One:

Definition - The basics of OpenAPI, Postman, and using Github to manage API definitions.

I’m going to be charging $1,000.00 per person for the two day seminars. I’m setting the minimum bar for attendance to be 5 people, otherwise I won’t be scheduling the seminar, and will be pushing forward to the next dates. I’ll make sure and let everyone know at least 2 weeks in advance if we don’t get the expected attendance. All seminars are open to anyone who would like to attend, but I am also happy to conduct private group seminars, with minimum of five people in attendance. My goal is to conduct a regular cadence of seminars, that people know they can plan on, and participate in as it works for their schedule, but also provide more stability for my schedule as well.

The objective with these seminars is to make it easier for companies, institutions, and government agencies to participate in my seminars, while also forcing them out of their bubbles. I’m finding the toll of me coming onsite can vary widely, and the value to seminar attendees is lower when they aren’t forced to leave their bubbles. So, I am looking to force people out of their usual domains, so that they begin thinking about how they’ll be doing APIs, and playing nicely with others–even if they are only intended for internal use. I find the process helps you to think outside your normal daily operations, and is easier for me to not have to navigate coming on site to deliver seminars.

I’ve published both initial dates to Eventbrite to test the waters, and we’ll see if I can shift some of the demand I’m getting to this format. I will also keep pushing dates out every other week, and in July I’ll probably start looking at dates in Washington DC, then London, Paris, and probably some other west coast US locations. If you have interest in participating in my API lifecycle seminars and / or have specific requests for venues I’d love to hear from you. I’m looking to continue formalizing my process as well as schedule, and bringing my seminars wherever they are need, but doing so in a more organized fashion that helps you get your team what they need, but will also be something that is more sustainable for me in the long term.